Community Mental Health Transformation: Neighbourhood Mental Health Teams
NHS Sussex are transforming the way they provide community mental health support for adults and older adults in Sussex to get the mental health support they need, when they need it.
A range of local community services are coming together as Neighbourhood Mental Health Teams across Sussex throughout 2025.
If you are currently receiving support from mental health services, these initial changes will not affect the support you are currently receiving, and if you have one, you will continue to have a lead practitioner or keyworker. Any changes to your care and treatment in the future will be discussed with you.
What Are Neighbourhood Mental Health Teams?
These new teams bring together community NHS, voluntary sector, and primary care mental health services to help people access local information and more joined-up mental health support.
These teams will have strong connections with a wider network, including local VCSE, local authority, social care and other specialist services.
This will help to provide improved and more joined-up care for people accessing services.
In East Sussex there will be 5 Neighbourhood Mental health Teams, these will be in Lewes, Wealden, Eastbourne, Hastings and Rother.
Need support for your mental health? Go to Getting help with your mental health: Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to find local support
How will services be different for service users, families and carers?
A person will be able to refer themselves, or be referred, to the Neighbourhood Mental Health Team. Together with the wider network of services, they will identify the support needed.
By services working more closely together as one team will also prevent a person from needing to ‘retell their story’ several times, or needing multiple assessments, as well as making it possible for a person’s care needs to be considered and treated as a whole
Why are NHS Sussex transforming community mental health services
Demand for mental health services has significantly increased in recent years, which has resulted in long waiting times for support, and services becoming overstretched.
With a number of different organisations providing different parts of the overall mental health system, this can be confusing and complicated to navigate, which can sometimes result in people not getting the help they need, when they need it.
The community mental health transformation aims to join up local services, to work together as ‘one team’, and provide people with a holistic package of care, tailored to their needs, as close to home as possible.
